Painted Blind
by Michelle
Summary: Clint and Natasha go undercover to try to stop a plot to kill thousands. The mission parameters are simple enough, until they aren't.
1. Prologue

_This is the biggest chunk of writing that I did for NaNo, and it's been sitting for a while, marinating on my hard drive. The plot is shamelessly lifted from an episode of _La Femme Nikita_ (the one with Peta Wilson), but even if you've seen the ep in question, I think there are some surprises in here for you. _

_There are six parts; this prologue, four chapters, and a short epilogue, which feeds (more or less) right into my series_ Taking the Edge Off.

_I have to thank EuphoricSound and brbshittoavenge for their cheerleading and encouragement (and for not freaking out when I sent them a fic that was 17k). _

* * *

As assignments went, it was kind of ridiculous.

He supposed that he should be used to it by now. Really, when had he ever received a straight forward mission? When, for that matter, had he ever had the luxury of falling into something like a routine? The closest thing he ever got to that particular albatross was bickering with Nat about whose turn it was to file the mission report.

But hey, they didn't pay him the big bucks because his job was easy.

He and Natasha had barely gotten back from their last mission (a real cluster fuck of an extraction from Abidjan), when they were called in to the briefing, both of them with heads still wet from interrupted showers. And here he'd thought they'd actually get their promised four days of downtime this go around.

Hah.

Despite the internal griping, Clint didn't really mind, not really, because what was he supposed to do with free time, anyway? Read a book? Watch TV? Organize his sock drawer? Shit, he didn't even _have_ a fucking sock drawer. At this point in his life, he wasn't even sure what he would do if he ever got something as unwarranted as an actual vacation.

He slid into the open seat next to Natasha, still a bit groggy from the flight. She glanced at him briefly as he sat down, smiling slightly, secretly at him in greeting, and his idiot heart skipped a beat. He clasped his hands on the table in front of him to stop himself from reaching out to put his hand on her arm.

She'd been crawling deeper and deeper under his skin lately, inching closer to him, smiled at him, told him things, and it was getting more and more difficult to keep everything professional when she invaded his every waking thought. Working next to her was a special kind of torture, but the alternative was unthinkable. He'd never had a better partner, never had someone who knew him as well as she did, and he'd never known someone as well as he knew her. He couldn't give her up any more than he could give up his right arm.

He just needed to get a fucking grip.

The poor excuse for coffee served up by SHIELD's mess kicked in sometime in the middle of Hill's briefing, but apparently, he hadn't missed much.

" … when two days ago, we received intelligence reports that six canisters of a particularly lethal neurotoxin gas was stolen from a lab in Sweden. Directory Fury wants the two of you to retrieve it before it can be used on the public."

Hill had never been Clint's favorite operative, but at least she cut to the chase.

"Twelve hours ago, we learned that Soren Lindfors, a known associate of the Ten Rings group, is looking to put together a team for an unspecified purpose. Given the parameters of his advertisement, we believe that Lindfors intends to use the neurotoxin in a large, European population center sometime in the next week."

"What do we know about toxin?" Natasha asked, never looking up from where she was leafing through the contents of a manila folder.

"Nothing more than what's in there," Hill said, motioning toward the dossier. "We do know that it's fast acting, so fast that there's no point in manufacturing an antidote, and that it can be aerosolized for rapid and wide dispersal."

"You want us to infiltrate Lindfors' team," Clint said. It wasn't a question, so he didn't bother to phrase it that way.

Hill nodded, and clicked a button on her remote. Two faces popped up on the screen behind her, and she passed Clint two more folders.

"These two are Benjamin and Fiona Crane. They responded to Lindfors' call and are scheduled to arrive at his compound in 15 hours."

Natasha nodded, looking thoughtfully at the young couple on the screen. "We picked them up?"

"Yes. According to our intel, Lindfors has never met the Cranes. The two of you will assume their identities to gain access to the compound and retrieve the chemical agent."

He leafed through the documents on Benjamin, no, Ben Crane, passing the other folder to Natasha while Hill continued with the briefing.

"The Cranes have been married for less than six months, but by all accounts, they enjoy a very physically affectionate relationship. I trust that this will not be a problem for you?" she asked, casting her eyes between the agents.

Natasha was already nodding her agreement, so he went along with it, but he swallowed hard after the two women looked away. They've done married before; he could do married. But "very physically affectionate"? He hoped to hell that just meant he would only have to hold her hand or put his arm around her occasionally because if it meant more than that he was pretty sure he was going to embarrass himself or otherwise completely ruin the only damn good relationship he'd ever had in his life. With anyone. Platonic or not.

He took a deep swig from his mug, draining the end of the sludge, hoping that his voice wouldn't betray him when he spoke. Luck was with him, though, for once.

"When do we leave?" he asked.

"Wheels up in 30," Hill replied.


	2. Chapter 1

_Thanks to everyone for the follows and the reviews! Glad you're liking it so far! I'll be posting once a day until this is done, so don't worry about me leaving you hanging between chapters for too long :-)_

* * *

The flight was over too soon (a traitorous part of him said "Not soon enough"), but they both ended up using it to catch up on some much needed sleep, so it wasn't a total loss. He could see straight now, and the world seemed sharper, more defined; it was a focus born of reaching an actual REM state rather than caffeine overload, and every part of him felt better for it.

Once they landed, he and Natasha were shuttled off to a SHIELD field office where they assumed their new identities. He'd read up on Crane, memorized his file, and Clint was semi-confident that he now knew enough about the guy that he could make a passable impression amongst people who'd heard of Crane.

Of course, the new outfit and weapons provided by the local agents didn't hurt; the trappings of the role went a long way to making him feel like he could pull this off. There was something nagging him though, a vague feeling in the back of his mind that he couldn't shake.

He'd been undercover before, so he wasn't worried that he couldn't handle the assignment, but that did not fully dispel the unease roiling in the pit of his stomach. It was as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting for something terrible to happen.

Part of it might be the desire to know the unknowable – right up until that first moment when they met Lindfors and his men, right up until they'd walked onto his compound and passed the point of no return, there was no telling how this would turn out. Even though they'd been repeatedly assured that Lindfors had never met either of them, they wouldn't be sure, _couldn't_ be sure the same was true for all of his men until it was too late to adjust their cover. What if it turned out that no one had met the Cranes before, but instead they'd met Clint Barton or Natasha Romanoff … ?

Clint shook himself. No sense in crossing that bridge unless he had to.

Natasha, of course, slipped into her role without so much as a blink, putting on the clothes and makeup befitting the freelance security specialist she was impersonating as if she were born Fiona Crane, nee Walsh.

She never gave an outward sign that this was something difficult for her, that she had reservations about turning into someone else, but then, she'd been born to this, raised to be the perfect infiltrator. That ability was one of the things that he admired most about her, one of the things he'd been envious of back in the beginning, when he'd first brought her in. She could make anything look natural, make her worst mistake look intentional, make it seem like nothing could rattle her cool veneer.

He knew better now, of course, knew that the life she'd led ate at her, haunted her. Moreover, he knew that her skills weren't something she'd come by under the most pleasant of circumstances, but instead of pity (an emotion he'd seen cross the face of several agents who'd found out the truth about Natasha over the years), something else grew inside him, a dull, strangely pleasant ache that twisted inside of him when he thought about her. He had his suspicions about what that feeling was (he wasn't an idiot, no matter what Natasha said), but there would never be a good time for him (for_them_) to explore it, so he tamped those thoughts down, locked them deep inside and threw away the key.

That said, it was a damn lucky thing he didn't have anything in his hands when she met him by the car because he would have dropped it.

He would freely admit that she was gorgeous any day of the week, calm confidence and intelligence shining out through her green eyes. He had seen her dozens of times dressed for an op, wearing two thousand dollar dresses and dripping with precious gems. He had seen her bloodied and sopping wet with sweat, tears in the leather of her uniform. He had seen her in all states of dress and undress in every situation imaginable.

But there was something different about the way that she was dressed today, the way her short dress clung to her curves, the way her hair spilled down her back, the way she smiled when she saw him that made the back of his throat dry out and his stupid, traitorous heart skip a beat. Maybe it was the promise of putting his hands on her while she was dressed to distract, that _he _got to be the one who held her close this time, when normally he just watched her from a distance, always looking but never touching.

"Hey, good lookin'," he said when he found his voice, throwing what he hoped was an easy grin in her direction.

She rolled her eyes at him, but he swore he could see one corner of her mouth turn up as she tossed him the car keys. "You're an idiot, Barton."

"Just practicing," he said and tossed his bag in the trunk. "Did you find a place to secure my bow?"

She smirked and opened the car door on the passenger side. "Of course. Now, get in the car and drive."

* * *

The drive from the field office to Lindfors' compound was relatively quiet. Natasha slept most of the way, and he didn't want to wake her with his music, so he contented himself with listening to her slight snoring.

It was kind of cute.

Well, if one could call Natasha _cute_.

(He did, all the time.)

He prodded her awake when they reached the outskirts of the little backwater town near the compound. They rehearsed their back story once more, going over the fine details of how they met, how they got into the business, and their motivations for joining Lindfors. It was good practice, something they did before every op like this, and the normalcy of it was almost comforting.

She threw him for a loop when she asked, "Tell me what you like about me."

He blinked. "What?"

He caught her cheshire grin out of the corner of his eye, and he got the impression that she was teasing him even though she said, "Tell me what attracted Ben Crane to Fiona Walsh in the first place. Was it her ass? Her tits? Her stunning personality?"

Natasha said the last with a laugh in her voice, trying to keep the mood light.

He didn't know what came over him, didn't know why he just didn't go with any of the outs that she provided him, but he went with the truth, _his_ truth.

"Well," he started, then swallowed his nervousness. "We met on a job, remember? We were working for competing arms dealers, both trying to broker a deal with a terrorist cell with loose ties to the Ten Rings."

"My team was winning," she said smugly.

He grinned at that. "Obviously, but even in the face of your clearly superior skills, I was still trying anyway."

"Because you're stubborn," she said, and he didn't think that she was talking about Crane.

He laughed to dispel some of the tension that was coiling inside of him. "Because I'm stubborn," he agreed. "My team tried to take yours out, but …"

"Our clear tactical superiority won out," she interrupted.

He chuckled. "Yeah, of course it did. And then your guys won the bid, but the buy went to shit and your boss and the rest of your team was killed. You showed up at my hotel later that night."

"And you let me in because you just couldn't resist a damsel in distress," she finished for him airily.

"You were hardly a damsel," he said wryly. "I let you in because of the look in your eyes. You knocked on my door, and when I saw you, I didn't see the persona you'd so carefully crafted, but a young woman who was terrified, alone, with every one she thought she trusted dead or working for the other side, and there was absolutely no option left to her but to ask for help from a man who'd tried to kill her the day before."

They both knew he wasn't talking about Ben and Fiona, but about another hotel, six years ago in Prague, when a 17 year old Natalia Romanova had begged him for death or asylum, whichever he felt like providing, not really caring about the choice as long as someone else made it.

Natasha grew very quiet and still, and he thought she was just going to ignore what he'd said, until she whisptered, "She was grateful, you know." She turned to look out the window at the countryside. "Still is."

He reached out to her, dared to grab her hand, half-expecting her to smack him away. His heart clenched when she squeezed his fingers back.

They didn't speak for the rest of the drive.

At the end of a several mile long gravel driveway, they came to a locked gate, and at least six visible cameras swiveled toward them as he put the car in park. He'd be willing to bet there were more in the trees surrounding them. They waited several minutes before a man in a ridiculously tiny car appeared.

The man stepped out of the car and met Clint at the gate, leaving Natasha nonchalantly buffing her nails in the car.

"Who are you?" the man asked.

"We're here to see Lindfors," Clint said, not bothering to answer a question that the man should already know the answer to.

"Do you have an appointment?"

If that was supposed to throw Clint, to make him second guess whether he really wanted to work for Lindfors, it was a piss poor attempt. He made sure that his displeasure was obvious.

"Why else would we be here?"

The man stared at Clint while he touched a finger to his ear, listening to whoever was on the other end of his comm. At last he nodded and opened the gate. He beckoned them within, and led their car up a winding road toward a house even Tony Stark would be proud of.

Clint let out a low whistle when it appeared before them. "Jesus. How much do you think it costs to heat that thing?"

Natasha snorted, feigning annoyance. "Enough to buy us a month on an island somewhere they don't speak English and the alcohol they serve is unpronounceable," she said, and he wondered what it would take to convince her to do something like that with him.

A man could dream.

He parked in front of a garage that looked like it held a dozen or more cars, and he hoped that he would be able to get a peek inside at some point, just for sheer curiosity's sake.

He might have tried to crack a joke, but the moment they stepped out of the car, they had smoothly transitioned into their roles. He was Ben Crane, Natasha was Fiona, and they were here for a job.

He flung his arm around Natasha's shoulders when they met in front of the car, and she wrapped hers around his waist, the two of them fitting together comfortably, as if they always walked like that.

"Where's Lindfors?" Natasha asked, an affected trace of Boston apparent in her accent. She didn't have to add that touch; it was highly unlikely that the Swede could differentiate between one American accent and the other, but then, that's why she was the master spy and he was so often just her backup.

"You let your woman talk for you?" the man who'd led them in asked.

Ah, so that was how they were playing this, then. Clint took a mental note.

"When she asks the right questions," Clint replied.

They were led inside the mansion, up several flights of stairs and into an office, and he spotted security cameras in every corner, around every turn. The man was obviously paranoid, but not without good reason. If you worked for the Ten Rings, a healthy dose of paranoia was what kept you alive.

Clint immediately recognized Lindors from the photo in his dossier. He was 49, though he looked closer to 40, dark haired and dark eyed with a nasty looking scar just above his left eye.

"You him?" Clint asked, even though he knew the answer.

Lindfors didn't say anything, but chose instead to study them, his eyes lingering uncomfortably long on Natasha. Clint fought the unexpected urge to punch the guy in the face; this was what they were here for, and Ben Crane wasn't the sort of person to ruin a job just because the boss liked to stare at his wife's tits.

At last Lindors said, "Yes, I am Soren Lindfors. The two of you come highly recommended."

Clint did his best to look smug.

"I confess I am confused as to why," Lindfors continued. He snapped his fingers and all hell broke loose.

They came out of nowhere, ten dark suited men with handguns, and if he and Natasha weren't the agents they were, they would not have survived.

But then, SHIELD didn't call them the best without reason.

They leapt into action moments before the men attacked. Diving for cover in opposite directions, he tossed Natasha one of his backup pistols, then took out three of the men in rapid succession. She stood, fired two rounds and took care of two more of their problems.

Less than a minute after they'd apparently come out of the walls, seven of the ten men were dead and the other three were incapacitated.

Playing a hunch, Clint lowered his gun and looked at Lindfors, the only man he and Natasha had left standing. "So did we pass your test?"

The man smiled.

* * *

They were given a room on the third floor of the mansion, and it resembled nothing so much as a five-star hotel. The room was spacious and professionally decorated with a large window that looked out into the woods surrounding the mansion. Not their usual accommodations on a mission, but he had to admit that it was kind of nice to not have to worry about bed bugs.

"Nice digs, right Fi?" he asked her when he tossed their bags on the bed. He had a feeling that it wasn't safe to drop the act even behind closed doors in a place like this. Lindfors struck him as a man who kept a close eye on everything that went on under his roof.

That Natasha had the same suspicion was confirmed when she sashayed over to him and clasped her arms behind his neck. Without preamble, she kissed him, running her tongue along the barrier of his lips until he parted them. He didn't mean to do it, knew she was just acting and that he needed to play it cool, but he let himself roll with the moment, pulled her against him and held her close as they kissed.

"I've spotted at least three cameras and two audio bugs so far," she murmured against his lips, and the statement should have killed the mood because it was clear she was only kissing him to maintain their cover. But, well, he definitely male, a breast man at that, and hers were currently pressed against his chest.

Fuck, she felt good in his arms.

His good sense abandoning him, he skimmed his hand down her back, reached lower, and he cupped the round curve of her ass, squeezing lightly and forcing himself not to groan at the wave of satisfaction that washed through him. He'd been dreaming about doing that ever since Sao Paulo, when he'd had to boost her up over his head so she could climb into a ventilation duct. She felt better than he remembered.

Natasha bit his lip hard in retaliation, drawing him sharply back to the present.

"Time for that later, _baby_," she said, a dangerous warning in her eye. She took a step backward and out of his arms. "Right now, we need to get ready for the big dinner with the new boss man."

He nodded, and took a steadying breath. She was right; they were supposed to meet Lindfors along with the rest of the team for dinner downstairs in half an hour. It wasn't the sort of thing they could be late for.

But that didn't stop him from checking out her ass when she turned around and headed into the bathroom.


	3. Chapter 2

_In which Clint and Natasha get up close and personal and the story earns its rating. _

_Thank you so much to the reviewers and followers on this story! You guys make writing all of this worth it! Love you!_

* * *

He didn't really give Natasha enough credit for her acting skills, not by a long shot. If he hadn't known better, if he hadn't planned it all out with her in advance, even he would have been taken by her act. This was the side of her that he rarely got to see (up close anyway) because he was all too often relegated to the rafters and the rooftops, watching her from afar and never quite appreciating just how good she was at what she did.

Up close, she was breathtaking.

She clung to his side throughout the little meet and greet, not quite letting Clint take the lead, but nevertheless giving the impression that he was the one who called the shots (she'd obviously made the same mental note he had earlier, had picked up on the not-so-subtle misogyny of this crew). She did it, though, deferred to him without ever implying that she couldn't (or wouldn't) slit the throat of anybody who crossed her.

He was envious of the way Natasha balanced on the razor's edge between carefree and dangerous all evening, easily giving everyone present the impression that she was damn good at her job and very, very much in lust with her husband. He'd be hard pressed to match it on his best day, if he ever could, and as time passed he was more and more grateful that that she managed to keep most of the attention on her, distracting their new teammates with a subtle show of skin and her wide, toothy grin all through dinner.

Around midnight, he caught Lindfors looking at them appraisingly, and Clint got the impression that they were being sized up, that they'd done something, however unconsciously to draw the man's attentions. For a short, but very, very tense amount of time, he worried that they'd been found out, that they'd (who was he kidding, that _he'd_) done something wrong, let something slip or one of the other men in the room had recognized them, that they'd aroused deadly suspicion.

Natasha was pouring herself another drink at the bar when he found out just what else had been aroused.

"Your wife is a very attractive woman, Mr. Crane," Lindfors said without preamble, sipping his drink slowly.

Clint wondered where this was heading, though he had an idea based on the file he'd read back at headquarters. Fury had even taken the time to warn him about this, about Lindfors' . . . tendencies, but he'd dismissed it at the time.

"She is," he agreed carefully, subtly shifting his body so that he stood between Lindfors and Natasha. "And it's just Ben," he added, forcing himself not to clench his jaw.

Lindfors dragged his eyes away from Natasha long enough to meet Clint's gaze when he asked, "Well, then, _Ben_, I don't suppose the two of you share? She seems like the type who wouldn't mind spreading her attentions around."

He made an idle motion around the room as he spoke, and Clint got the immediate impression that he'd better head Lindfors off before he outright suggested what Clint thought he was suggesting because there was no way in hell that he was going to let that happen. The words "over his dead body" might have come to mind, except that he didn't want to tempt fate.

Clint swallowed, hard, then as calmly as he could manage, he said, "I'm kind of . . . selfish when it comes to Fiona."

Lindfors only looked disappointed for a moment, the emotion flickering across his sharp features. He opened his mouth to reply, but Clint never learned what he'd intended to say because Natasha chose that moment to walk back from the bar, swaying her hips and giggling as if she were drunk.

(Clint knew better. She could drink everyone in this room under the table and still pilot the Quinjet through a hurricane with one hand tied behind her back.)

"Hey, baby," she said, twining her arms around Clint's neck and grinning at him. "Did you miss me?"

Instead of replying, he grabbed her head and kissed her roughly, possessively, shoving his tongue down her throat and staking his claim on her in case anyone else got any bright ideas. She rolled with it, barely even stiffened in his arms, and fuck, he hoped she didn't cut balls off for it.

When he pulled back, though, she looked at him quizzically rather than angrily, her confused expression so slight that anyone who didn't know her as well as he did wouldn't even notice it. He rubbed his thumb against the small of her back by way of apology.

She shocked him then, leaning back in to kiss him again. She arched into him, pressed the length of her body flush against his, her tits flattened against his chest, and she swept her tongue thoroughly over his mouth. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything other than kiss her back and when she broke away this time, they were both gasping for air.

She moved away first, downing the remainder of her drink and sticking it on a nearby side table. Feeling playful (and not at all possessive because they were just pretending and she wasn't really his), he grabbed her when she stepped too close to Lindfors, tugged her back against him and nipped the back of her neck.

He felt rather than heard her gasp, and when she turned back to him, the arousal in her eyes and the accompanying flush high on her cheeks looked real.

As in _real._

Really real, like she was actually getting hot under the collar because of him, like she wanted to drag him off somewhere and do unspeakable things to him, not at all the sort of interest he'd seen on her face before, the play-acted kind, but the kind he'd dreamt about in idle moments on countless ops. Her eyes were wide as she stared at him, her mouth dropped open as she panted, and fuck, she was going to be the death of him.

He caught Lindfors' spark of interest in his peripheral vision, and even though they should be sticking around, gathering more intelligence on the other people in this room, he wanted to get out of there before their hand was forced.

Scrambling to come up with something he could say without tipping their audience off, he went for bluntness, lacing his words with as much of a warning as he dared.

"You want to get out of here?"

She curled into him, met his eyes for less than a second, and then, just loudly enough so that Lindfors' could hear, she said, "Take me to bed, baby."

The man in question was looking at them appraisingly when Clint turned back to him. The older man sipped from his glass again before he asked, "I see you're having a good evening, Fiona."

Her alias dripped out Lindfors' mouth as if he were hissing her name, the syllables rolling across his tongue suggestively, and Clint found that he once more needed to restrain himself. He knew Natasha could handle herself, knew that she had faced down and taken care of bigger problems than an overtly lustful criminal, but that didn't register through the fog of his anger, not with every eye in the room fixed on them, staring at _her_ like she was a piece of meat to be divided up amongst them.

He didn't know how she could stand it.

She licked her lips, unfazed, pretended like she didn't really understand the undercurrents of the situation (she was too well trained, too observant for that, though). She giggled, a throaty, raspy noise, and then she said to Lindfors, "Hopefully, it's about to get a good bit better. Right, Benji?"

Natasha turned her heated gaze on Clint then, all the while still leaning bodily against him, spreading herself across him, and he felt the jealous gaze of all those in the room.

"I wanna fuck," she said petulantly, using the same tone she used to lure marks off into private rooms.

He couldn't stop himself from reacting to her voice, the way the words slipped out her mouth and glided over him, into him like a punch to the gut. She didn't mean it, couldn't mean it, would never mean it, but goddamn it all, it sure sounded like she did.

She blinked at him when he didn't say anything, and to cover for his shocked speechlessness, she said, "Please, Ben?"

He coughed into his closed fist to cover the wave of arousal that washed over him. Acting far less than he would like, he leered down at Natasha, smirked at her with what he hoped was a knowing smile. She clung to his side, breathing hotly against his skin, and she started worrying his neck with her teeth. She dropped the arm she had around his waist to the curve of his ass, and god, he really wished the circumstances were different.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, nodding toward the people in various states of drunkenness hanging around the room. "I believe that is my cue."

Lindfors raised his glass, thankfully not repeating his earlier proposition. "Far be it from me to stop you." He waved them off with a flip of his fingers. "See you both at 6 am."

Clint thought they were getting off too easily, like there was something they weren't being told, but he was just happy to get out of the room, happy to get away from the tension.

Natasha giggled as they walked down the out of the room and into the long hallway, leaning heavily on him and clutching at his arm. She was so close he could feel her breath in his ear, and he forgot himself for a moment, let himself believe that Natasha was really aroused by this, that she wanted him.

She killed that notion the moment they were out of sight.

"I dropped a bug in the room. I can hear everything they're saying right now," she said, discretely tapping the ear where he knew she had placed a receiver.

Keenly feeling the ever present scrutiny of the security cameras, he whirled her in his arms, pressed her into the wall and kissed her greedily, working over her neck, licking all the places he'd been fantasizing about for years. He might never get another chance at this, and, to a degree, he wasn't above taking advantage of the situation.

"What are they saying?" he muttered, dragging his tongue up the smooth length of her throat. He sucked on the skin then, hard, knowing it would leave a mark and feeling gratified when she started breathing more heavily in response.

"Lindfors is watching us right now. He's going to put the security feed from our room on the main screen by the bar," she said, and he finally parsed the look the man had shot him before they'd excused themselves. When he hadn't been willing to go along with his first plan, Lindfors just found another way to get what he wanted.

He rolled his eyes in annoyance, but then continued for a completely different reason as she hitched a leg up over his hip and ground her core against him. He felt himself grow immediately hard from her movement, all the blood rushed out of his head, and he gritted his teeth to stop himself from bucking against her and revealing too much.

He had to remember this was all for show.

"You got a plan?" he asked roughly, shifting his pelvis away from hers so she wasn't grinding on him quite so provocatively. He wanted this, so, so badly, of course he did, but not like this. Never like this.

Natasha had no such qualms. She grabbed the top of his shirt, pulled down on it until she exposed his throat, clearly intent on leaving her own marks on him.

"We put on a show," she said. She nuzzled the underside of his chin softly, almost tenderly, and then added, "Carry me. Make it look good."

It wasn't a hard order to carry out. He lifted her up into his arms, and her legs twined high around his waist. Her skirt had ridden up when she jumped around him, and instead of resting on the relative safety of her dress, his hands were directly on her skin, her underwear, touching the smooth skin of her upper thighs. Her mouth working hot on his neck and the mellow buzz of alcohol in his system combined to take all of his concentration just to keep carrying her along the corridor and not pin her against the nearest surface.

No, he would need to do very little to make this look good.

They made it back to their room by sheer force of will, and he set her back onto her feet to open the door. She let him tug her inside, and she shrugged off her sweater as the door clicked shut behind them.

"Alone at last," she said loudly, grinning, and then she leapt for him, kissing him sloppily, all teeth and tongue.

He stumbled blindly backward from the force of her assault, and he sat down heavily on the overstuffed arm chair tucked into one corner of the room. She went with him, climbed into his lap like he knew she would, and just like that, he was living out one of his oldest fantasies. She was wild against him, kissing him, sucking on his lips and tongue, moving around until he couldn't think about anything other than her.

Par for the course, really.

He was so wrapped up in it, absorbed in her that it took longer than it should have for their situation to really sink back in.

It had been on the edge of his mind right from the beginning, of course, that they were being watched, but then she kissed him and his dick took over his higher brain functions and he really should know better. He knew full well that there was surveillance in the room and that their host was watching them back in the living room, that the entire team was watching and waiting for them to do something.

Despite that, it didn't even occur to him that she was just acting until she leaned in close, rubbed her tits against his chest (_fuck_, she could go ahead and do that forever) and said, "Pretty sure the primary camera's in the corner behind us."

He froze for a moment. It felt like a bucket of ice water had been thrown over his head, and for the first time all night he was thinking clearly.

Camera.

Right.

This was a job, nothing more. It was obvious, now that he thought about it. No matter how good their partnership was, no matter how good of a friend she was, the only reason a woman like Natasha Romanoff would ever want him would be because she was carrying out an assignment (he refused to contemplate the other thing, the worse thing, that she was so willing because she still somehow thought that she owed him for saving her life).

He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her in close and bit her earlobe to cover what he was saying. "I didn't want it to be like this."

Fuck. That came out wrong. She wasn't supposed to know, he didn't _want_ her to know that he'd lusted after her, wanted her, couldn't get her out of his mind since the day she dropped into his sorry life. He knew she could count the number of friends she'd ever had on one hand, just like he knew he was the only one of them still alive. Every time he'd thought about her this way, every time he'd brought himself off with the thought of her at the forefront of his mind had only made him more and more determined to keep it a secret. She didn't need another besotted, idiot male in her life. She needed stability. Someone she could trust to have her back. Someone who wasn't too busy staring at her tits to stitch her up after a mission went south.

And shit, that wasn't even relevant right now because he'd just as good as told her he had planned out how he wanted to sleep with her. He just prayed she either misheard him or misinterpreted what he said because there was no way in hell that she would still want to go through with this if she understood what his slip meant. Love, as she so often reminded him, was for children.

She didn't comment though, just tilted her head toward his ear and murmured, "It's okay. I don't mind."

Which, of course, was the crux of the matter – she didn't _mind_ fucking him, when he would have cut out his eyes just for the chance to touch her.

She started running her hands under his shirt then, dipping lower to the waistband of his pants, skimming her palms over his muscles of his abdomen, and he knew that he had to stop her now, before this went any further. God, he wanted her, though, he had wanted her for longer than he could remember, and screwed up as it was, it was the best moment of his entire life.

But, fuck, he had to do a better job at reminding himself that he didn't want her like this. He didn't want it to happen just because she _had_ to sleep with him. He wanted her to want him as keenly as he wanted her. Because as much as he'd fantasized about having her panting on top of his body, he wanted that reaction to be genuine. He wanted her to be hot and wet and sighing for him, because of him, not because the mission parameters demanded it.

He wouldn't compromise their partnership, not like this.

He grabbed her hands, forced her to stop undoing the fastenings at his waist. Holding her still, he held his lips to her ear.

"We don't have to do this. We can figure out another way," he told her, trying to state his point more clearly this time. This wasn't what they'd been sent here to do; Fury would never sanction two of his agents actually sleeping together to get the job done, no matter the price. Despite their occasional willingness to bend the law, SHIELD was not the Red Room.

Natasha frowned at him, though, obviously confused, and she was so fucking beautiful that he wanted nothing more than to kiss her again. What he wanted didn't matter, though. He couldn't live with himself if she only slept with him because she was under the impression that she had to.

"We could just pretend, make it look real," he said in her ear. "We don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

She stared at him for a long moment before her expression cleared, and then she smiled at him, amused. She even chuckled a little.

He'd remember the next bit for the rest of his life because instead of sliding out of his lap or dragging him off to the bed to simulate sex underneath the blankets, she slowly and firmly ground down on him, rubbing her center against his painfully hard cock. Her mouth opened as she circled her hips, and unbelievably, it actually looked like she really wanted this.

He shook his head, tried to move his hips away from hers, and it was embarrassing that he was this aroused. He couldn't let her do this, fuck the consequences.

Then she grabbed his chin, held his face between her warm palms and said, "I want you." She kissed him, slowly, thoroughly, like she meant it, and he let himself start to believe her.

"We can work around this, sweetheart," he murmured. "You know that, right?"

She continued to smile inscrutably at him, and she took one of his hands in hers. She dragged it over her body, along her waist, brought it all the way down to her bare thighs. She tugged his fingers upward then, up underneath her skirt, between her legs, right up to where they joined. His fingers brushed against her panties, and . . .

She was wet. Oh, _god_, was she wet. So wet, in fact, that she'd drenched her panties, soaked right through them. She sucked in one shaky breath through parted lips as she stared at him.

He stared right back at her in open-mouthed amazement, unsure how to proceed now that she'd managed to blow all of his preconceived notions out of the water.

Like always, though, Natasha fixed things, got them moving again. She rocked her hips against his still palm, rubbed herself on his fingers, and just as suddenly as he'd stopped, he was moving again.

He pressed firmly on her clit through her underwear, finding the engorged flesh easily because of the extent of her arousal. She moaned throatily when he rubbed her, and she was leaning so close to him that he actually saw her pupils dilate.

He lost his control at that, lost all semblance of caring that they were on a mission, that they shouldn't be doing this, that every movement they made was being watched because she was so fucking hot and she wanted him and he couldn't fathom any of it.

He shoved the thin fabric of her panties aside, desperate to feel her, desperate to make her come over and over. He grabbed the back of her head with his free hand, brought her mouth to his even as he slid his first two fingers inside of her, and he couldn't believe how hot and wet she was around his fingers.

"Oh, yes," she breathed, writhing against him as he pumped, thrusting her barely clad tits in his face and encouraging him with her motions to play with them.

Never let it be said that he denied her anything.

Keeping up the movement of his right hand, his used his left to pull the front of her dress down. He skimmed his fingertips along the edge of her bra, fiddling with the lace until she tugged on the short hairs at the back of neck in frustration.

He laughed, full of mirth and unmitigated joy that he was really here, that she was really on his lap, that he had one of his hands inside of her and she was wet, so very, very wet, all because of him.

He mouthed her through the lace, bit gently on her nipple and felt her purr.

"Oh, god," she moaned, biting her lip and looking like a goddess come down from on high to torment him.

She pushed back from him a little, pulled her dress off over head, tossing it carelessly behind her. Then she reached back up behind herself, twisted her arms around until her bra slackened, came loose, and then her rosy tips were free and swaying gently in front of his face as tentatively bounced on his hand. She was slick and hot and tight and everything he'd ever wanted, and he was so absorbed in her that all he could manage to do was stare.

"Put your mouth on me," she said, no, _ordered_, her voice rough with want.

He bent down to her breasts, caught one pebbled peak up between his lips, and he swirled his tongue over the tip in time to the thrusting of his hand. She cried out again and again, tightening up, and he felt the first delicate tremors of her impending orgasm start to ripple around his fingertips.

"Like that!" she sobbed as he twisted his hand, her hands digging into his shoulders. "Oh, please, like that!"

He swallowed hard, steeling himself, and said, "You're so fucking wet for me. Jesus, you feel good."

He picked up the speed of his fingers when he spoke, and she clutched at him in response, pulling on his hair almost to the point of pain. He added another digit then, slipping it inside of her with the others and massaging her clit with the heel of his hand.

"Come for me, baby," he said, dropping his face back down to her chest and sucking once more at her reddened flesh. She stiffened in his arms as she neared her release, and he felt her breath catch in her lungs. And then, far too soon, she was moving again, coming hard around his hand, shouting out her pleasure and writhing like a wild animal.

She clung to him as she came down, kissed his face all over while she caught her breath, and he tried to commit this perfect moment to memory. He tried to convince himself that he could live with the fact that he'd only driven Natasha to this state because of the situation, that maybe she'd only wanted him because they'd been at each other all night, teasing and caressing, and acting the part of a recently married couple. He thought he could learn to deal with all of it (probably) because she truly wanted him in this moment, because she'd come apart in his arms and kissed him like he was the air she breathed, and the fact of that alone would carry him through a thousand lonely nights.

He pulled his hand out of her then, intent on gathering her up and making his way over to the bed to put on a less explicit show for the cameras. They could slide under the blankets now with none the wiser. He knew from past experience that his erection would eventually fade away even sleeping in the same bed with her, so he stood up, adeptly picking her up with him, and she was so slack and pliant against him that he couldn't really believe that it was entirely an act. He felt a surge of pride at that, that he'd made her come so hard she actually relaxed. He couldn't believe his luck, that he was getting to play out so many of his fantasies right now, that he got to see her like this when he knew for a fact that no one else ever had.

It was enough.

But when he'd laid her carefully on the bed, pulled the covers up over her and slipped in next to her, she didn't relent, didn't fall asleep or sit astride him and go through the motions of sex. She didn't do anything that he'd intended. Instead, she wrapped herself around him, and he could feel every inch of her pressed up against him - the strong muscles of her arms around his waist, the heat at the juncture of her thighs, the smoothness of her forehead against his cheek. Her body was bared to him, and he could feel the dampness below her waist through her panties, now even wetter following her orgasm.

"We should probably . . ." he started, and then the hand at his waist went lower, slipped into his pants, and wrapped itself around his cock. He grabbed her wrist, a repeat of his earlier action, even if she'd gotten further this time.

"You don't . . ." he started, but she cut him off with a glare.

"Don't tell me what I want, Barton," she whispered in his ear. He knew she would never use that name, not here, not where someone could hear unless she really meant it, unless she wanted him to know that she was sure about this, that she wanted to do this.

He loosened his grip on her wrist and saw stars behind his eyes as she started to pump. She worried the skin at his neck as she worked him, nipped at the flesh under his ear and sucked the lobe into her mouth. He'd imagined this scenario a thousand times, a thousand different ways, but even in his wildest dreams, it had never been as good as this.

She slowed her motions right when he was at the edge, right when he was worried that he was going to come all over her hands, and he marveled at how well she could read him.

"I want to fuck you," she breathed into his ear, her voice shaky, uncontrolled, and he was lost. "Please let me."

She straddled him the moment he nodded, and he must have been really out of it because her panties were somehow gone, when he was sure they'd still been on her when they'd gotten in bed. He didn't worry about it, though, because she was naked and her slick opening was pressed against his dick and her eyes were fathomless black pools as she stared down at him.

She held his gaze as she sunk slowly onto him, and by the time her ass met his upper thighs, they were both gasping for air. She was tight (so deliciously fucking _tight_) around his cock even after he'd used his fingers on her and he gasped from the onslaught of sensation. He could feel her slowly stretch to accommodate his size, feel her flutter gently around him as she whimpered from taking him. He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood just to stop himself from coming too soon, before this even got started.

He thought he was doing a reasonable job, given the circumstances. He'd never been with anyone like this, without a single barrier separating them, and it was her, it was _Natasha _sitting on his cock, cradling him between her legs, her slick heat that was enveloping him. He prided himself on keeping it together so well.

And then she started moving.

He cursed then, loudly and violently, because he hadn't expected it to feel this way, hadn't expected to feel so raw, so exposed, so . . . connected. He hadn't felt like this since he was a virgin, stumbling through his first time, fumbling and nervous about fucking it all up. Maybe he hadn't felt this way even then because he was pretty sure that nothing had ever been as good as this, that he had never felt so close to anyone before. He was melding with her, becoming part of the same person, two halves of a whole seeking mutual release.

"Shit," he muttered again, perilously close to the edge, but wanting to draw this out for as long as he could. She kept moving, clenching her inner muscles tightly around him and running her hands all over his chest and shoulders, and it warmed him to think that she couldn't stop herself from touching him, that she wanted to touch him, that she was this hot and bothered because she was sitting on him, riding him, feeling him inside and outside of her.

She pinched his nipples lightly, curved down over him and chased her fingers with her tongue. "So fucking good, C . . . Ben," she said, covering her slip neatly. All the same, he grinned at her loss of control, at the way she almost messed up everything.

He put his hands on her then, gripped her waist, pressed his palm to her belly and pushed gently on her until she was sitting upright on top of him. He pumped up harder into her, bracing his feet flat on the bed for purchase, and he watched with rapt interest the way her breasts bounced as he fucked her. He still didn't quite believe that this was happening, not just a figment of his overactive imagination, and he didn't want to close his eyes for a second, didn't want to blink for the fear that he might miss something.

He couldn't stop himself, but then, he didn't have to, and he reached up, grabbed one full breast, pinching her and enjoying the weight of her in his palm. He couldn't get enough of it, touching her, looking at her, feeling her around him, and he knew he wasn't going to last much longer from the dull ache low in his belly, the warmth that was spreading up along his spine. He dropped his other hand low, down to where their bodies joined, and he used his thumb to increase the stimulation against her clit, to heighten her pleasure.

Heighten it he did, because the moment he laid his hand on her, she threw her head back and moaned in the most sinful voice he'd ever hear, "Oh, _fuck_." He bucked up into her, felt his cock jerk inside of her as her reaction made him break his rhythm. She didn't mind though, just kept crying out, begging, "Don't stop, baby, please don't stop!"

God, she was so fucking hot and he should have a better way to express his attraction, even if it was just in his mind, because he really should be able to describe the base lust and devotion he felt, should be able to elaborate on all the emotions that were so inextricably knotted up in his gut when he thought about her. He would do anything to hear her moan like that again, to watch her chest heave and skin flush as he pushed up inside of her.

The flush that had begun on her cheeks had spread down her body, coloring her chest the most delightful shade of scarlet, and his hands stood out against her skin where he gripped her. She was raving as she approached her own release, without a thought or a care in her body except that one goal, and he wanted nothing more than to make sure she achieved it first, even if that meant he had to think about puppies and baseball caps (_shit, Barton, don't think about her wearing your baseball caps, oh god, no_) to stave off his rapidly approaching orgasm.

He felt her tremble as she did before, when he'd only been using his hand on her, and he circled his thumb once, twice, and then she was coming, arching so far back that he felt the ends of her hair tickling his knees. He followed on her heels, came apart just after she did, and the aftershocks wracked his body so completely that he was sure he would never recover.

She collapsed on top of him, still quaking, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her, desperate to be closer to her. She kissed him languidly then, drawing her tongue over his teeth and sucking gently on his lower lip.

"I've wanted to do that for a long time," she said at last, still speaking lowly, softly enough that the bugs wouldn't be able to pick it up, but he thought that even if it did he wouldn't care. He could die happy right now from that admission alone.

She slid off him, but she didn't pull away from him. She put her arm back around him, threw one leg up over his hip, and she whispered into his ear, "Go ahead and sleep. I'll take first watch."

He supposed he shouldn't be contemplating it, but she was warm and soft next to him, and he was exhausted. Holding her close to his side, he fell asleep.


	4. Chapter 3

Our spies head out on what they think is a test run, but turns out to be something else entirely.

_Thanks so much to all the lovely reviewers and followers! You guys really make this worth doing! Thank you so much!_

* * *

She nudged him awake a couple of hours later.

He blinked groggily a few times, unaware of his surroundings for several seconds, disoriented not so much by the strange bed, but rather by the fact that he had a companion.

"Hey," she said, but her voice didn't quite register. "It's your turn."

"What . . .?" he said, his voice still thick with sleep.

He rubbed a hand over his face, as he started to wake up. As soon as rational thought began to assert itself, he noticed that she was pressed up into his side, naked and pliant, and without warning, all the images of what had happened earlier came flooding back to him. The feel of her hips under his hands, the way she'd wrapped her legs around him and clutched him close, the scent of her skin, her eyes squeezed shut as she came – all of it ran through his mind, and he suddenly found himself with a growing problem on his hands.

"You good?" she asked when he didn't say anything.

"I'm good," he choked out, carefully keeping his voice down. "I'm up," he whispered, wincing at the unintentional double entendre and carefully twisting his hips so that she didn't notice his . . . problem.

She smiled at him sleepily, though, not realizing the affect she had over him, and she turned onto her side, faced away from him to sleep. Of course, being who he was, he was drawn to her like a moth to a flame, and even if it felt like courting disaster, he wrapped himself around her, hoped that she'd let him hold her as she slept because if he couldn't sleep, he could at least be comfortable.

And then she wiggled to get comfortable and the curve of her ass ran right up against his rapidly growing erection.

He was going to ignore it, wait for the blood to dissipate, but she wiggled again, more firmly this time, and there was no way _that_ was an accident.

He ran his hand up her torso from where it had been resting low on her abdomen, coming to rest between her breasts. She sighed and shifted again, the motion causing her hair to fall away from her neck, baring her nape. Testing a theory, he leaned in, licked the soft, pale skin he found there, and when she moaned in response, he knew he had been right.

"Oh, so you like that, do you?" he asked, feeling absurdly proud of himself for discovering the spot.

Instead of answering, she grabbed his hand from where it had been tapping out a slow cadence on her sternum. She brought it back down her body, slipped his fingers between her thighs, showing him as she had before just how much she liked his attentions.

He plunged his fingers into her wetness, growing impossibly harder at the sounds she made as he finger fucked her. She reached behind her then, between them, grabbed his erection in her blissfully warm palm.

"Want you," she whispered, pumping him gently, and he was more than happy to oblige.

He grabbed her hip with the hand still slicked with her juices, used it to raise her leg enough that he could insinuate his own leg between her thighs, and then he spread her, opened her up and guided himself inside of her.

He knew that neither of them would last long this time; she was incredibly wet, her nipples like steel underneath his fingertips, and she brought him closer and closer to the edge with every motion, every desperate noise she made.

He nuzzled her neck as he grew closer to his own release, sucking on her flesh, bringing it between his teeth and biting gently down to the sounds of her encouragement until she cried out, stiffened against him, clutching at his forearm where it draped across her body.

He wasn't far behind her, and when he came, it was something of a surprise, rippling up from the pit of his stomach and washing over his body in one glorious, never ending wave of pleasure accompanied with a deep, soul wrenching feeling of satisfaction.

She craned around to kiss him slowly, thoroughly, and he slipped out of her with a woeful groan that she echoed.

"You sure you're okay to stay up?" she murmured lowly against his ear.

He nodded, tucked her head under his chin even as she settled in against him. "Yeah, get some rest, sweetheart."

* * *

In the morning, after a shower and breakfast and a mission briefing that would have made Maria Hill roll her eyes in disgust, Lindfors packed him off in the back of the van, crammed him in with the other members of the team. Natasha ended up riding shotgun with Lindfors, and Clint had a hard time believing it was coincidental. He didn't like it, was pretty sure she wasn't comfortable with it either, but he knew she wouldn't go along with it if she didn't think she could take care of herself. He constantly had to remind himself that if she had any idea what sort of emotions she was stirring up in him right now, she would cut out his kidneys with a rusty spoon.

She'd be right to.

Just the same, he kissed her thoroughly in front of the team, and patted her on the ass as she turned to get in the car.

Her eyes flashed murder at him when he shut the door behind her, and he knew he could expect some particularly heinous form of retaliation later (the first time he dared to call her "sweetheart" outside of a mission, she'd super-glued together the last ten pages of the novel he'd been reading. Damn thing was in Hungarian, too, and out of print).

But the satisfying crack his hand made when it made contact with the curve of her ass was totally worth it.

The ride in the back of the van was certainly uncomfortable, made all the more so by sharing the cramped space with four other men, one of whom had trouble containing his bowels every time they hit a bump in the road. The others weren't much better, all of them side-eyeing him with something indefinable in their expressions, a mixture between admiration and evaluation.

Not for the first time, he wondered just how much of what he and Natasha had done last night was visible through the security cameras. At breakfast, he'd caught the tail end of a conversation about a "hot ass" that had gone silent very quickly the moment he and Natasha had stepped through the door.

He hoped that she was having a better time of it up front.

The discomfiture aside, the trip to the "test site" (the term made his skin crawl) was uneventful, and he wanted to get this part over with as quickly as possible. Logically, he knew that what they were doing was the right thing, that by letting Lindfors release the chemical here, today, they would be able to save hundreds if not thousands of lives later. Lindfors would start to trust them (or, well, as much as he trusted anybody). They would be part of his team, partners in crime, and when Lindfors decided to use the rest of the toxin, they would be there to stop him. Clint knew that Hill was right about this, that sometimes morally questionable means prevented horrific ends, but none of that stopped him from feeling dirty about the whole thing.

The van slowed to a halt right on schedule, and he assumed everything was operating like clockwork. He didn't figure out that something was wrong until Lindfors opened the rear doors wide and let them out of the van.

Clint had been expecting an office building, maybe a bank or some other smaller venue for their test run, but instead they were at a metro station, one of the city's busiest, and a sinking feeling rapidly developed in his gut.

It deepened when Lindfors started passing out knapsacks, one to each of them.

"What's going on?" Clint asked Natasha as loudly as he dared. Lindfors was distracted, gesticulating as he gave orders to two of the men.

She glanced around almost nervously, except that Natasha was never nervous, never let anything phase her, so this must be something astoundingly bad.

"He got a phone call while we were en route," she murmured. "He started changing his plans . . ."

"Something to share with the group, Mrs. Crane?" Lindors asked, emphasizing Natasha's cover name in a way that Clint would have to ask about later.

Natasha narrowed her eyes, but shook her head. And then she took a step closer to Clint, and he wondered if he'd made a mistake in leaving her alone with that guy.

He pushed the thought aside for the moment as Lindfors addressed them.

"I have been informed that our group has been flagged by several world intelligence agencies. As such, my colleagues have decided to move up our timetable. Each of your backpacks contains one canister of the chemical we intended to test today." Clint fought the urge to drop the backpack he was holding, knowing precisely how deadly the poison contained within was.

Lindfors continued, "You have 20 minutes to get your canister in place before the timer will release the toxin. Each of you has a gas mask in your bag. We will meet back here in 25 minutes."

He didn't wait for questions, just sent each of them off toward their drop points. Natasha and Clint headed off in the same direction, and the second they were out of sight, Natasha grabbed his hand and dragged him into what looked like a janitorial closet. She shut the door firmly behind them and placed her backpack on the table.

"What do we got?" he asked, slipping his own pack off.

"Digital timer," she said, twisting her canister gingerly in her hands. "External power source, straightforward wiring." She dug around in one of her pockets until she came up with a knife. "Always prepared," she said with half a grin.

"That's the Boy Scouts, Nat," he replied. "Not SHIELD." He opened his pack and pulled out his canister. A quick inspection revealed the same simple design as Natasha's.

She shrugged. "You try being raised by the Russian government and see how solid your references to American culture are."

"In Soviet Russia, culture references you," he quipped, neatly snipping and disabling the timer on his canister.

She rolled her eyes, but he still caught the affection for him hiding out in the corners of her mouth, in the quirk of her lips. That was all he got, though, because she otherwise ignored him, and she zipped her bag shut. Shouldering it, she said, "Time's wasting, Barton. How do we want to play this?"

He'd already been thinking about it, of course, from the moment he'd stepped out of the van and realized the plan had changed.

"Systematic sweep," he said. "Corner them one by one, disable the timers as we go."

She nodded, checked her watch. "Do we have enough time for that?"

"Probably not."

They shared a grim smile, ready to spring into action, and if there had been any lingering doubt that something would have changed, that sleeping together would affect how they worked as a team, that concern was easily dispelled when the door to the janitorial closet swung open unexpectedly. They slid together with nary a word, not even needing to exchange a worried glance to fall into the cover together.

Lindfors cleared his throat, and Clint pried himself away from her lips.

"We're on a timetable," Lindfors said drily. "If the two of you would be so kind as to keep to it."

"Sorry," Natasha said, ducking her head and blushing a very interesting shade of pink, one that he wouldn't mind seeing more of sometime.

"It just reminds us of our time in Moscow," she said pointedly in his direction, drawing his attention to the place name.

Moscow? When were they . . .?

Oh. Right.

_Moscow_.

"Well?" Lindfors asked when it was clear that neither of them were going to make the first move.

Clint shrugged, prodded Natasha in front of him with a hand at the small of her back. When she stepped out the door, he drew Lindfors' attention, just like she had done for him two years ago on a mission in Russia.

"Sorry, it's the job," he said. "She always gets a little . . . bothered."

Lindfors was smirking, but that only lasted until Natasha pistol whipped him across the back of his head. He slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Well, most likely unconscious. Natasha tended to hit hard.

"That felt good," she said breezily, and he chuckled.

Clint knelt to check for a pulse (thready, but present, and he was only a little disappointed). He dragged Lindfors' unconscious body all the way back into the closet, tucking it behind one of the shelving units. It wouldn't fool anyone who actually came into the closet looking for something, but it should keep him out of the way for long enough. There wasn't time to tie him up, not if they wanted to reach the others in time, so he left Lindfors unsecured, hoping for the best.

"Ready?" he asked, and Natasha leveled an annoyed look at him, as if to say "Really?"

She brushed by him on her way out of the room.

They cornered the other members of the team one by one, just as planned. Natasha neatly took down each member of the team, leaving him free to retrieve the canisters, disable the devices, and place the neutralized vessel into his backpack. It was simple enough; he and Natasha had always been pretty unstoppable together. He was happy to leave most of the heavy lifting to Natasha, knowing that she enjoyed working her frustrations out with her fists. Punching a few of these guys in the head would level her out.

But no matter how much they hurried, no matter that they'd gone as fast as they could have, there wasn't enough time to make it to every member of the team before their time was up.

When they took the escalator down to the lower train level, it was apparent that something was wrong. Civilians were running en masse up the stairs and escalators, even the one he and Natasha were using, which was going in the wrong direction.

He checked his watch. "We should have more time!" he said to her loudly, trying to be heard over the sound of panicked shouts and screams.

There were too many people to avoid now, and the bulk of the panicked mob was forcing the two of them back in the direction they had come from. Scanning around for an alternate route, Natasha leapt neatly up onto the metal surface that ran in between the escalators, reaching out a hand for Clint and pulling him up behind her. He could see gas at the bottom of the ramp in front of him, a fine mist laying low on the ground.

He was already holding his breath and reaching for his gas mask by the time he saw the bodies.

They were twitching grotesquely on the ground, seizing up in horrible contortions, bodies dead before their inhabitants had realized it.

"Shit," he said. It was all he could manage to snap his mask into place.

He hated it when they were too late, when there was nothing they could do except mitigate the damage. It cut him, made him feel useless, and he knew that he would see the faces of these people he failed in his dreams for a long time to come.

Natasha held up a hand, stopping him in his tracks. She pulled one of her guns, motioning for him to be careful. He wasn't sure what she saw, hadn't seen it in the confusion, but he trusted her, knew she wouldn't tell him to watch out unless she knew something was up.

He drew his own weapon, followed her as she inched along toward the tracks, her head whipping around more than usual to account for the reduced visibility caused by her gas mask.

Out of nowhere, a boot kicked his gun out of his hand, sending it sailing off over the edge of the platform, down onto the tracks. He clamored for his backup, but he didn't have time to pull it before the boot was back, this time attached to the biggest of their erstwhile teammates.

He tried to block, tried to fight, but without warning, he was down on his knees, the faceplate of his gasmask cracked, and he barely had enough time to drag a deep breath of clean air into his lungs before his mask was gone, kicked over the edge to join his gun.

_shit shit shit shit_

He started to panic outright then, only vaguely aware of the scuffle taking place on the edge of his vision. He knew that Natasha was taking care of his assailant, that it was damn lucky for both of them that the guy had caught him unawares and not Natasha. None of that mattered though, none of it was in the forefront of his thoughts because his lungs were starting to burn from lack of oxygen and he didn't know what he was going to do because if he gave in to the ache, if he took a breath, he would be dead.

He was moments away from breathing in anyway when he heard the telltale sound of a body falling heavily (too heavily to be Natasha), and then a gas mask was pressed to his face.

He breathed greedily for several moments, filling his lungs with filtered air, assuaging the sharp pains in his chest.

When he opened his eyes, she was bent over him, and he had never seen that look on her face, not like that. She had worn it before, shades of it, but those expressions paled to the worry that she carried on her brow and in her eyes right now.

"Clint?" she asked, her voice breaking at the edges.

He nodded, still too out of breath to speak, but he put his palm on top of hers where it rested on his chest.


	5. Chapter 4

_Sorry for the late(r in the day) update! Life has been . . . well, life, I guess, this week! Thank you for bearing with me!_

_Thanks, as ever, to all the lovely people who've been reviewing and following! You guys really make my day! Just an epilogue after this!_

_And if you're interested, the lovely thenita over on tumblr has started making a podfic of this. You can check it out at soundcloud dot com / user127109466 / painted-blind-by-sidhera_

* * *

" . . . heard a noise. I turned around and Agent Barton on the ground without a gas mask," Natasha said in the cold, clipped voice she reserved for debriefings. "One of Lindfors' team managed to catch us off guard."

Fury raised his eyebrow. "And how did he manage to do that?" He directed it at Clint, despite Natasha's wording.

Clint shrugged. He was still playing that scene out over and over in his head, wondering how he could have missed something as important as a man hiding in the shadows.

It wasn't like him.

His first thought had been that he was focusing too much on his partner rather than the mission, but he honestly didn't think that he had been distracted by Natasha. He hadn't even been thinking about her, not really (certainly not to the point of preoccupation), except to note her position, keep track of where she was in relation to him.

Clint swallowed. "I don't know, sir," he said, and it was true. "Romanoff and I were fanning out, checking the area for hostiles and possible survivors. I guess the other guy just got lucky."

Clint knew that he himself had almost gotten very, very unlucky.

"Lucky?" Fury asked. "We aren't in the business of letting the other guys get lucky."

Clint didn't know what else to say. Was there really any defense for it? He'd screwed up, let someone get by him, and he'd almost died because of it. Point in fact, if it weren't for Natasha's quick actions, he would be dead right now.

"Once you lost your mask, what happened?" Fury asked, continuing on with the debriefing. The Colonel was already aware of what had transpired; he had read the report that they had prepared on the return flight, but one of the things that made Fury such an effective and capable commander was that he always wanted to hear the story from the horse's mouth.

"I subdued the single assailant," Natasha said. "I took his gas mask and gave it to Barton. We then cleared out of the contaminated area and assisted with the evacuation efforts."

Fury nodded, seemingly satisfied with her response, but Hill wasn't done yet, not quite.

"And Lindfors?" she asked. "How exactly did he manage to elude capture?"

Clint gritted his teeth. He could always trust Hill to bring it up that way. Well, she was to the point, at least.

He calmed a little, or at least managed to stop himself from barking out a rebuttal when the tip of Natasha's boot nudged his under the table, a subtle warning that he needed to take a few deep breaths before he tried to talk.

Natasha took the lead instead. "We were not able to both properly secure Lindfors and stop the attack within the time constraints. Given the nature of the situation, Barton and I determined that there would be greater potential for loss of life if we wasted time by tying Lindfors up than if we immediately sought out the remaining four canisters."

"Which resulted in a criminal, a known associate of the Ten Rings group escaping justice," Hill said, and Clint wanted to punch her.

Instead, he just said, "And if we had waited, found something to tie him up with or if one of us had stayed behind with him, then more of the canisters might have been deployed and more people might have died. It was not a risk we could take."

Hill started to talk again, but Fury cut her off. "I agree with Agents Barton and Romanoff. That was not a risk SHIELD was willing to take."

Hill nodded, made a note on her tablet, and then she said, "It was good work, Agents. Don't mistake my questions for accusations." She leveled her gaze at each of them in turn. "No other team could have pulled off what you did, and we are lucky that only one of the canisters was deployed."

Clint couldn't help but think that, for once, Hill didn't look like she'd swallowed something nasty when she complimented him. Shit, it was almost enough to make him smile.

Fury collected the papers spread out in front of him, put them back in their deceptively plain manila folder. "Good job, Agents," he said. "Take a few days; you've earned it. Hill, with me."

Clint stood after the senior agents left, tossing his Styrofoam cup into the trash (environmentally conscious, SHIELD was not), so he didn't notice that Natasha had already left the room at first. Frowning, he ducked out the door and caught a flash of red disappearing around the bend.

"Hey, Nat, wait up!" he called after her, shuffling quicker to catch up with her.

She didn't look at him as they walked toward her quarters, but neither did she wholly ignore him, slowing her steps until he was walking in time with her. He took it as a good sign. They hadn't talked about it, had been avoiding the elephant in the room, and he was starting to get worried, but if she wasn't running away from him, then maybe there was hope yet.

They walked in silence most of the way to her quarters.

He stayed quiet, letting her set the quick pace. Maybe they would talk when they got there, maybe they wouldn't, but she hadn't told him to leave her alone, all but invited him to follow her back to her quarters. Just, well, he was going to wait until she made the first move.

What was going on in her mind? Did she regret sleeping with him? Shit, did she even think about what happened that night or was it just part of the job, something pleasurable to be sure, but not something that she ever wanted to repeat?

When he'd awakened her on the morning of the job, she'd been curled into him, her face nestled in the crook of his neck and he might have used the word 'cuddling'to describe it was Natasha. He'd been hard pressed to wake her, not wanting to disturb her slumber when she'd looked so restful, so young, so perfect, but in the end he had to nudge her awake and she'd blinked groggily before rolling away from him.

He'd half expected (scratch that, still expected) that she would pretend it never happened; maybe she would just ignore him until he went away, until he stopped bothering her and they went back to how they had been before. He clung to the fact that she hadn't pushed him away though, not yet at least, and he let the first stirrings of hope take flight in his heart.

God, he wanted to tell her a thousand things right now. He wanted to tell her that he would be happy with whatever she would give him, whatever she was comfortable with whether it was exploring this new side of their relationship or not. He wanted to tell her that if last night was a onetime thing, he was okay with that, that they could go back to what they had been before, no hard feelings (though, perhaps, he would use slightly different phraseology). He wanted to tell her that no matter what happened between them, he would always have her back and he would always be her partner.

But he had always been terrible with words, he had always screwed this sort of thing up because he was the kind of guy who liked to jump the gun, read more into a situation than really was there, and here he was _mooning_ over her after one (extremely less than ideal) night together. He didn't even know what to say to her when it came down to it because everything about Natasha threw him off his game. If he said something to her, if he managed to make her uncomfortable? He didn't think, no, he _knew_ that he couldn't forgive himself if she never spoke to him again.

They rounded the last corner, and the stray SHIELD agents that had been plaguing their footsteps were gone. They were alone (or, what passed for alone at headquarters). All of his good intentions about waiting for her to make the first move were lost, and he could already feel the babble threatening to loose itself from his throat.

"I want to talk about . . ." he started, but she cut him off with a pointed glare. Even if they seemed alone, they were never truly alone, not here. Even the walls had ears. _Especially_ the walls had ears. He felt a little sheepish for not thinking of that detail, especially given their mission.

Taking the message, he waited until she keyed in the code to her room and they'd walked inside. She shut the door firmly behind them, visibly sagging with relief.

"I want to talk about it, too," she said quietly, not meeting his eyes, and he could hear the exhaustion in her voice, see it written all over her body. "But I'd like to shower first, if that's okay."

Yeah, he got that.

He knew her well enough to know that she hated feeling dirty, hated the reminder of the unspeakable squalor of the barracks she grew up in, and that the first thing she did after every mission was shower. When she'd first come to SHIELD all those years ago, he'd laughed at her, called her a neat freak, a duck out of water, OCD.

He'd since come to learn, though, that it was part of her ritual of battle, that bathing afterward was something that helped her put one foot in front of the other the next day, helped her get out of bed in the morning. Once he'd known that, once he'd learned _why_, he'd never mentioned it again.

He could hardly begrudge her the habit because right now he was feeling the same way, and he wanted to feel the water sluice down his body and wash the events of the past few days down the drain.

Yet some big part of him was quaking with nervousness and indecision, uncertainty and anticipation about what their future held. Because what if, even after she'd told him differently, even after she'd told him she wanted him, even after she let him follow her here, what if it had been a onetime deal, something that happened because of the mission, and not because it was a natural extension of their relationship?

He wasn't used to being unsure about himself or his place in the world, and it was uncomfortable, an itch underneath his skin that he couldn't ease. She'd always been like that for him, now that he thought about it. She'd always been a nagging sensation underneath his skin, influencing him, _changing_ him, making him more human even as he helped her do the same.

And god, she made his stomach hurt, confused him, turned him upside down and inside out and left him bereft of reason.

She reached for the hem of her top, and out of habit he started to turn around to give her privacy. Maybe he could try to relax in one of her chairs while she showered, take a cat nap or read a book or something - really, anything other than thinking about her wet and naked, lathering up that perfect body of hers . . .

Then she pulled her shirt off over her head, tossed it lightly into the basket by the bathroom door and asked, "You coming with?"

She turned around without waiting for an answer. By the time he'd gathered his jaw up off the floor and followed her into the bathroom, she was stripped down to her panties and bra, bent low over the tub as she adjusted the temperature of the water.

Her body was a map of their mission, Technicolor bruises marring her perfect skin, and abrasions scabbing over on her arms from where she'd skidded on concrete. He'd seen her go down while they were retrieving the second canister, had seen her opponent momentarily get the better of her, but he hadn't expected that she'd been injured that badly. He deflated a little at the sight of her like that, injured, in obvious discomfort, but she bore it quietly. His heart clenched, and he wanted nothing more than to hold her close, wrap her up in his arms and never let go.

He came up behind her slowly, his shoes making soft noises on the tile, and he was strangely gratified that she didn't start when he touched her back.

"How you feeling, Tash?" he asked, carefully running his hand down her arm, avoiding the larger bruises there.

She turned a smile over her shoulder, the wry grin he knew and loved so well, and maybe they really were going to be okay.

"Better after I get clean," she said. "Unhook me?"

He could tell from the stiff way she'd been moving that she was sore or she wouldn't have asked, but he liked that she did just the same, that she trusted him enough to let him in here with her. He helped her out of her bra, then her panties, and when she stood fully bared before him, she helped him strip away his own clothes.

She tugged him with her underneath the hot, scalding spray of the shower, and they held each other there, the top of her head pressed underneath his chin while the water soaked into them, washing away the troubles of the past few days.

Eventually she backed up, reached for her shampoo and began to wash, and the spell wasn't broken, per se, but the mood had shifted just the same. He silently kept guard, watching over her like he always did. Afterward, she switched places and roles with him, her wide eyed gaze trained on him as he washed.

They were in something of a trance, neither of them willing to break it, even though he wanted nothing more than to talk to her, to tell her everything he was thinking and hear her do the same in return.

But they kept quiet, and she leaned against him after he washed the last of the suds away. He should be confused about all of this, but he realized that he didn't care about any of that; none of it mattered when Natasha was there with him, in his arms and plaint. The burning questions that had been plaguing him since he woke up at Lindfors' compound did not seem as urgent now, not here when they were close and comfortable.

So instead of worrying or thinking or doing any of the shit that normally got him in trouble, he just held her, touched her skin, traced circles over her curves, and thanked whoever might be listening that he got to have this moment.

Natasha eventually grew impatient though, just like she always did.

"I don't think that what happened was ideal," she said into his chest, cutting right to the heart of the matter. "I mean, it could have happened better, but I don't regret any of it."

He might have been imagining it, but he thought he could hear a note of yearning in her voice, a fraction of the overwhelming uncertainty he felt when he thought about her.

"I don't either," he replied, not bothering to specify which part of her statement he was referring to because he meant both. He knew she knew that, though.

"Good," she said, a smile in her voice.

Eventually the water cooled, and she turned off the spray and threw back the shower curtain. Steam billowed out into the bathroom, fogging up the mirror instantly, and he watched their figures disappear from view behind the haze. His head felt like it was in something of a cloud, too, as she handed him a towel and took another one for herself. They wrapped themselves up in the terrycloth and padded out into her room.

He pulled his towel off from around his waist and sat on the edge of her bed to watch her run a comb through her wet locks, fascinated by the play of muscles under her skin, the way her damp skin glimmered in the light. He ran the cloth over his hair as he stared (he avoided the word _leered_ because she didn't deserve that, not from him or anyone), trying to catch some of the extra moisture that clung there.

Then her towel slipped, fell off her, twisting into a pile at her feet. She didn't even try to stop it, hadn't chased after in the slightest. She just let it slip to the ground without a care in the world.

And he didn't know how it happened, because he wasn't fifteen or a virgin or even sex-starved at the moment (could anyone be after a night with her?), but he caught sight of her rosy nipples reflected in the mirror, and context was everything because he was suddenly and painfully hard. He shifted his towel over his lap as nonchalantly as he could manage because this was really not how he'd envisioned this going. But, oh man, it was obvious, so very, very clear that he was aroused that there was hardly a point in trying to hide it, and he really fucking hoped that she was going to keep her eyes trained on her hair for just a little while longer, just until he could get himself back under control . . .

She met his gaze in the mirror, and she must have seen the heat reflected there because rapidly the uncertain expression she wore changed into one of naked want, of heat and desire and all the things that he'd hoped but not expected he would ever see there again.

She turned slowly, and he thought he might jump out of his skin as she moved toward him, one foot in front of the other, almost shyly, except that Natasha wasn't shy, had never been shy.

She stopped by his feet, her skin so close to his that he could feel the heat radiating off her body in waves, and it felt like she was devouring him, possessing him with nothing more than her eyes and her presence. She reached down to his lap, tugged on his towel, and he gave only the barest resistance as she pulled it away because there really was no purpose in trying to fool her.

The delicious friction of the terrycloth was almost too much, simultaneously rough and soft, a study in contrast on his cock, but for all his arousal, for all the things he wanted to do to her right now, he couldn't move, could barely breathe underneath the weight of her gaze. He studied her silently for minutes, days, years, drinking in what he had been denied for so long, and he only grew harder as she stared right back.

She licked her lips.

"Hi," she whispered, at last breaking the silence. He couldn't find the words to respond.

She climbed into his lap on the bed in eerie parallel to the other night at the compound, but this time they were alone, together for real without any need for falsities between them. No one was watching, no one was waiting for them to slip up or make a mistake and cry out the wrong name in the heat of the moment. It was just the two of them, and it was perfect.

He couldn't keep his hands still, couldn't stop himself from touching her, running his hands over every inch of her, relearning the planes of her body, this time without an audience. And wonder of all wonders, she couldn't keep still either, just as greedy for him as he was for her.

She was hot in his lap, her skin still water softened from the shower, and she clung to him as she rocked her hips back and forth, her slick center brushing maddeningly close to his erection.

"I want you so badly, Clint," she said, his name a sigh on her lips, and he let out a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding. He snaked a hand down between them, slid his finger along the length of her slit to test her readiness, and she sighed delicately, arched against him and moaned.

"Please fuck me, Clint. I've waited too long," she begged, and he had no choice but to obey, wanted nothing more than to acquiesce to her every whim as long as it meant that he got to hear her say his name like that, all breathless with need.

"Say it again," he said as he rolled her, tossing her bodily down onto her back beneath him.

"Please fuck me," she said. She spread her legs, then, and slung them loosely around his hips, embracing him.

He used one hand to position himself at her opening, pressed the tip of his penis against her, slightly into her, stretching her open with his fingers.

Shit, she was so wet and tight and she was Natasha and . . .

"No," he choked out. "The other part. My . . ."

"Clint," she cut him off, filling in the gap with the one thing that he so desperately need to hear. And then she whispered his name again, repeated it over and over like a prayer, reminding him of who he was, who he wanted to be, and that sometimes, everything was all right in the world. She leaned up and kissed him finally, and he felt the burn of her lips all the way in his toes.

He couldn't stop then, found no reason to prolong easing their mutual ache, so he plunged into her, thrusting all the way to the hilt, until he was completely sheathed in her warmth, and for the first time all day, he relaxed.

It felt different this time. He figured it had something to do with the fact that this time, here and now, this absolutely was not an act. There was no question that they were here entirely of their own volition, that this was something that they both wanted, a mutual desire to roll around together and enjoy the present. Despite that, though he was certain that she felt the same way, that she wouldn't _want_ him to treat this like a performance, the lack of an audience almost felt more terrifying, because he had no one to blame but himself if he failed to meet her expectations.

She nipped at his lower lip, drawing him back to the present.

"Stop thinking so hard," she said, and she hooked her ankles around his back as she began to move, trusting upward tentatively, encouraging him gently with her heels, with her entire body pressed along the length of his.

He fused his mouth to hers as they rocked, unable to conceive of anywhere else he'd rather be. He had wanted this time to be different, especially after the theatrics of their last encounter. He wanted to be more athletic, more impressive, more . . . _more_, but she didn't seem to mind that he wasn't exactly bringing his A game, that he was lying on top of her and thrusting mindlessly into her again and again, pounding his flesh into hers without a sense of rhythm. Maybe it was simple, but he thought that maybe simple was what they needed right now.

She was on the same page as he was, if he were to judge solely based on the way she was moaning against his mouth and writhing. She arched her spine, thrust her belly up against him, scraped her nails down his back, and he knew he would bear the marks on his shoulders as a memory of this encounter. He wanted that, ached for that, needed that because even now, even as he drove himself into her, fucked her into the damn mattress, even nowhe had a hard time believing that Natasha Romanoff, his partner, the picture of perfection, beauty and desirousness, deadliness incarnate would want to be here, like this, with _him_.

He felt like screaming with joy, wanted to shout it from the rooftops, tell every person that he'd ever known that he'd finally, finally, _finally_ found the thing he'd been searching for.

Instead, he kissed her as tenderly as he could given the harsh, desperate movements of their lower bodies, and he ghosted his fingertips over her forehead, trying to convey half of what he felt for her in his touch.

She was still crying out his name, sobbing it over and over again as he slid into her, a mindless litany that she did not stop, one that reverberated through every pore of his body. She became boneless beneath him, clinging to him for dear life, and it felt as if he were fucking all the tension out of her body. Maybe he was at that, because he felt himself relax more and more into her as she met his thrusts, felt his mind loosen and his brain finally, blessedly disengaged as he neared orgasm.

"I'm going to come," she choked out. "Oh, _fuck_, Clint."

He felt her muscles quiver around him, felt her start to shake uncontrollably as she began to seize, curving upward to hold herself closer to him, screaming so loudly that he was sure the people two floors down could hear her. He didn't care though, not one bit, didn't mind if anyone heard them because he was there, too, coiled up and ready to erupt into her the moment she lost control.

And then she did, and he had never seen anything more beautiful.

She grimaced as she came, her brow furrowed as if in deep thought. Her head fell backward and she bared her teeth, gnashed them and she sucked air roughly into her lungs. He leaned down to kiss her as he slipped over the edge with her, needing that last bit of contact between them, finally feeling whole as he pulsed in time with her contractions.

She was still rippling around him, squeezing him gently when he regained himself, and he knew then he would never get tired of her, would want to be with her for as long as she would have him because she was beautiful and scary and perfect and everything he needed.

So he told her. Or, rather, he tried to tell her, but she beat him to the chase.

"I've wanted to do that since . . ." She turned her face up toward him and sighed a little wistfully. "You know what, I don't even know?"

He chuckled, unsure of what else to say or do. He tried to roll off her then, remove his weight before he crushed her, but she held on to him, did not release the grip of her thighs.

"No!" she said a little too dramatically, obviously more so than she'd intended because she blushed, and he'd never seen that particular shade on her before. It suited her. Then again, everything did.

"Stay," she said, quieter this time.

He settled back against her (but he kept the majority of his weight in his elbows).

"You okay?" he asked because he didn't know what else to say.

The corners of her eyes crinkled at that, the edges of her mouth turned up, and it took him longer than it should have to realize that this was a smile, a real smile coming from her, one that conveyed happiness, contentment even. It was nothing like the one she plastered on her face in her regular, day to day interactions, the ones that suggested that human interaction was a chore.

No, this was different even than the smiles he'd thought genuine before. This smile came from somewhere deep inside her, he knew, could tell, could see the sincerity, the force of her whole heart behind it.

She blinked up at him. "It's stupid," she said, and a dusting of pink washed anew across her cheekbones.

He pressed his lips to the skin there, nuzzled her with the tip of his nose. "I don't mind," he said, feeling pretty stupid himself.

She shifted underneath him, moved until they were side by side. She stared at him pensively, not quite meeting his gaze when she spoke. "You helped me change my life, you know? And for a while I thought I owed you for that . . ."

"You don't," he interrupted, but she pressed a finger to his lips to quiet him.

"Let me get through this, yeah? I know that, I learned that. From _you_, you idiot," she said, and she dropped her gaze to where her fingers rested on his sternum. "When you let me into your hotel room . . ." she swallowed. "I thought you let me in because you wanted to fuck me, and you were going to let your people kill me."

He blinked at her, honestly shocked. "I wouldn't have . . . Fuck, Nat, I would _never_ . . ."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "I know that, dummy. All I meant was that you showed me that people could do things without expecting anything in return. You wanted to help me because you're you, not because you thought it would indebt me to you, and for so long I tried to pay you back anyway. I tried to figure out how I could give you back what you gave to me."

She smiled wider then, kissed him briefly on the lips, and he waited for her to finish her thought. She never talked like this, not this much, and he could sense that this was an important moment for the both of them.

"And then, I . . . I stopped caring about any of that, and I just started caring about you," she said quietly, flushing but holding his gaze. "I know it's shitty of me, but I didn't start to figure it out until I saw you lying on your back at the train station . . . when I thought you were dead . . ."

She trailed off, and he could feel her start to retreat into herself, to pull back from him, but he would be damned if he was going to let her do that, not when they'd come so far.

"I'm still here, Tash," he said, reaching out to her.

"I know," she said. "Just . . . it shouldn't have taken you almost dying for me to figure out what you meant to me."

He stilled.

"What I mean?" he asked, unsure just how deep her emotions for him ran. Well, he had his suspicions, he could read her better than anyone else alive, but he wanted to hear her say it, he wanted incontrovertible proof.

She swallowed, obviously bracing herself. "I . . . I need you, Clint. I just . . . need you."

He closed his eyes against the swell of emotion that ripped through him at her words and tucked his face against the crook of her neck. "I need you, too, Nat," he whispered, and they let it rest at that.


	6. Epilogue

_Well, here it is! The last bit! This story is something of a spiritual prequel to my series Taking the Edge Off (the details don't quite match up, for various reasons, least of which is that this is NaNo fic), but if you're looking for more after this, that's one way to go. _

_Many thanks to EuphoricSound and brbshittoavenge for all their patience with me as I worked through this beast. Thanks, darlings! I love you guys!_

_If you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what you think!_

_Thanks, as always to everyone who's reviewed and followed and favorited - you guys are the best!_

* * *

The next few months weren't easy.

If they weren't being shipped out, they were being debriefed. If they weren't being debriefed, they were training new recruits. If they weren't training new recruits, well, then they were probably sleeping.

Most of the time, it wasn't together.

In between the missions and the training and the paperwork, though, they found ways to steal time, found ways to connect, to continue down the strange, tenuous path they'd started at the compound.

They managed to keep their relationship, if you could even call it that, secret, but Clint had a sneaking suspicion that they weren't as careful as they should have been, that they were more transparent than either would like to believe. More than once, he caught fellow agents side-eyeing him, as if they knew something was up, that they somehow could tell he'd spent the night wrapped up in Natasha just by looking at him.

She, of course, had snorted, called him paranoid ("They've _always _looked at us like that, Barton").

The illusion of secrecy was shattered entirely in Belarus, when Coulson had wandered back into the safe house unannounced and had found Clint's face buried between her thighs.

Coulson hadn't said anything, but neither had he been able to meet their eyes the next morning.

They were more careful about locking the doors after that.

But no matter how careful they were, no matter how much Coulson's silence led them to believe that they'd earned a little latitude through their competence, eventually their solo missions started to outnumber their partnered ones, and it wasn't long before Strike Team Delta wasn't a real team at all.

The real end came when Natasha was given a long term assignment, one that he had no part of.

"I'm being sent to LA to work for Tony Stark," she said, studiously avoiding his gaze as they sat across from one another a table in the mess hall. "My plane leaves in four hours."

They'd planned to meet later that day to spar, but that was out of the question now.

"How long?" he asked, already dreading the answer. This had been coming for a while, had been hanging over them since Belarus.

She swallowed audibly, and took a deep drink from her coffee mug, scowling at the contents. "Six months, minimum. Coulson got me an entry level job in legal."

Clint chuckled, but it was mirthless and harsh. "You really think it's going to take you six months to work your way up to Stark?"

She snorted, leaning forward onto her elbows. "Of course not, but you know Fury."

"Yeah. Always be prepared."

"That's the Boy Scouts, Barton," she said, smiling ruefully at him.

They were quiet, then, because there really wasn't much to say. It was her job to go just as much as it wasn't his, and she hardly had right of refusal. That wasn't in the cards for her.

Natasha was the one to break their silence, but then, she had always been the brave one.

"I hate leaving things like this."

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Like what?"

She looked at him then, frowning slightly in disapproval. "Don't try to bullshit a bullshitter, Barton. You know what I mean."

Yeah, he did. They hadn't had enough time to really explore what was going on between them, and he would struggle to label it if he had to try. They weren't _dating _(or whatever normal people called it when two people had semi-regular sex), but neither were they simply partners anymore. There was something there, but they needed to be together, needed to be around each other more often to figure out what that something was.

He wasn't sure they would ever get the time.

"Look," he started, pressing ahead once the idea was in his head because otherwise he would chicken out, ignore it, run away from her. The sinking feeling in his gut redoubled itself, and he had to get this part over with before he threw up.

"I'm not trying to drag this out," he said, trying not to choke on his tongue. "What we had together was fun, but I understand if you want to . . ."

She rolled her eyes and reached out across the table, touching her fingers to the back of his hand.

"Don't be an idiot," she said, but her voice was soft, full of reassurance and comfort and all the things he needed to hear from her right now. "I don't mean that we should _break up_ or something."

He rolled his eyes, at himself as much as her word choice, but he couldn't help the surge of hope that rolled through him at her words.

"So you're still interested in . . ." he started, gesturing between the two of them.

"Yes."

He scratched the back of his head. "Oh."

They stared at each other for a few long seconds, and he was sure that his grin was just as goofy as hers.

_Oh_.

"Yes, well," she said at last, clearing her throat. "That still doesn't mean that I'm happy with the way we're leaving things. I don't like regret."

He turned his hand over on the table, touched his fingertips to hers. "Not big on it myself." He swallowed the lump forming in his throat, tried to catch what little breath remaining to him before he continued on. "So what are you saying?"

She glanced around the deserted mess, looking for prying ears and eyes. Finding no one close by, she said, "Well, it's just . . . I know I'm going to be gone for a while, but maybe it doesn't . . ."

She sighed and rubbed her forehead in frustration.

God, he knew how she felt.

"Just because we're apart, it doesn't have to change," he said. "_We_ don't have to change."

She looked at him, the corners of her mouth turning up, and it seemed like she was bracing herself for something. "I like what we have, and I don't want to let our jobs mess it up."

"It doesn't have to," he agreed. "Not if we don't let it."

If anyone could pull it off, it was them.

"Yeah," she agreed. "I don't want it to."

"I don't either."

"Good," she replied, making him feel awkward and warm all at once, making him feel like a teenager again, desperate and hopeful and short of breath.

Fuck, he wanted her.

Well, time was short, and rapidly diminishing, so he scanned the room, once more making sure that no one was in earshot.

"Hey, so, what do you say I head out of here and maybe walk back toward my quarters?" he asked nonchalantly. "Then, oh, I don't know, maybe three or four minutes later, you could, oh, follow me out of the room and somehow end up walking down the corridor that leads to my quarters."

She smiled when she realized where he was going with this. "Well, I bet I'll suddenly remember that I left a book back in your room. My favorite book, _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ . . ."

He scoffed. "No one will believe that, Romanoff. _Anna Karenina_, of course."

She rolled her eyes. "I might be Russian, but I'm not _that_ Russian," she said. "So when I come back to get my Verne, you'll just have to invite me inside."

"It would only be polite," he replied.

"Of course. And then one thing would lead to another . . ."

"You'll discover that my shirt is inside out, of course, so you'll have to remove it to fix it," she said.

"And then I'll be forced to lose it," he said, really starting to get into the new turn of their conversation, ready for her already.

"I'll be mad, obviously, because it was one of my favorite shirts."

"Oh, obviously. But since you know I'm just keeping it to remind me of you when you're gone, you won't actually mind."

She blushed a little at that, a hint of pink coloring her cheeks, and she bit her bottom lip, unable to contain her delight.

Emboldened, he slipped his foot forward on the floor, touched the toe of his boot to hers. He felt her push back, returning the pressure.

"I'm going to miss you, Nat," he said, sobering suddenly and fully at the thought. He would miss her, more than he had anticipated. Maybe the months they've been spending mostly apart were supposed to prepare them for this eventuality, but he found that now that the precipice was upon them, he wasn't ready for it at all.

The slight grin she'd been wearing dropped from her eyes then. "Yeah. I'm going to miss you, too."

He stood abruptly, distancing himself from the emotion in her eyes because he was afraid that if he kept staring at her, he would be compelled to drag her across the table, right here, right now, audience be damned. It wasn't a pretty thought, but he rather got the impression that Natasha was thinking much the same thing.

"Well, I'll just be on my way then," he said, but she wasn't looking at him, didn't even appear to have acknowledged his words. Except he knew her, he knew the quirk of her eyebrow, the way that she blinked rapidly meant that she'd heard him, meant that she would be right on his heels, and if he had to wait to claim her until they were behind closed doors, well, he'd better get used to it.

Six months in LA, indeed.


End file.
